Happy New Year!

"Contentment is life living through you.

Joy is life living through you.

Satisfaction and strength are life living through you.

Peace is life living through you.

...Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you." 

                         ~Hokusai 

Wishing that you conjour good magic so that your best self ever is revealed to you in the coming new year!

A Teaching Creme Brûlée

“I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.”
― Charlotte Brontë

I am no innocent bystander. Everything I do, say, think and believe affects my life. I had a teaching creme brûlée last nite. I knew it was OK to order it, but I did not pay enough attention to the description on the menu. It read, "enough for 2 or 3 people." So when the oval tart dish arrived - it was the size of a clown shoe - we were all very surprised. It was then I had a choice and I did the right thing. I ate just the right amount and had the rest wrapped up to take home. (I did offer to share it with my friends, but they so rightly would have none of it. I hang with very enlightened people!)

But I was again tested at home as I took the pudding from it's shiney folded black paper box to place it in a more durable container. "Gee - that is not as much as I thought," I thought. "Gee - that spoon tastes good. Ya know - I think the burnt sugar may dissolve before I get to it again tomorrow. Perhaps I should finish it tonite?"

Don don don donnnnnnn! Oblivious to the forbodding Beetoven-ish chords playing over me and the dish and the spoon, I carried my doom with me up the stairs to my bedroom. Yes - it was eaten. Yes - there was a belly ache. And yes - I had totally disregarded all my inner wisdom. 

I am no innocent bystander here. I created all of it just like I am creating this message to myself today, as a reminder. I am not powerless. I am NEVER powerless. All the choices I make bend my life forward!

Knowing this Truth I move onward being more aware in the moment of every single MOMENT!

What thing needs more of your attention today?

Tag You're It!

Don't Postpone Joy

Today I am here...

"Picture in your inner eye, your inner sight, four avocado seeds on the window sill. Three are suspended in a glass of water and have sprouted. One is still dry and papery and brown. Each of the sprouting seeds has its own character. One has two long roots, like two rubbery legs folding around each other in the bottom of the glass. Out of the top rises a cluster of tiny seedling leaves, and surprisingly, on this one, these leaves are white -- little tight white albino avocado seedling leaves, coming out of that big hard seed knob. Another has one short straight root and one straight shoot bearing green leaves at the top. The third has neither root nor shoot, but the whole seed has been split open by a thrust from inside, and the two halves shoved apart by the germinating seed force -- that little bunch of stuff, big as the end of your pinkie, shoving those big doors aside like a tiny Samson. It is a wonderful sight. And now let us look at the fourth seed, dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside. But within are a life force and a living plantness which we cannot see with our ordinary eyes. If we are to behold the wrinkled old seed in truth, we have to behold it with imagination, with our inner eye. Only with the inner eye of imagination can we see inner forms of Being and Becoming. In this lifeless-looking seed there is a germinating center, totally alive and totally invisible."~ from The Crossing Point Selected Talks and Writings by M C Richards

I am the fourth seed today - "dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside." I know when it is time I will robustly broadcast my own special leafy self - wide and tall and full. And I too will bear fruit which will bear seeds that will in turn bear fruit and so on and so on...

Knowing this is power. 

In the meantime I am NOT willing to postpone Joy until I sprout. For it is Joy that nourishes me. Yes - no matter the stage or state of my germination I will nourish Joy.

What do you nourish within yourself?

Tag You're It! 

Finding your G-spot

"If you can sit quietly after difficult news (even if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm)... If you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealously... If you can happily eat whatever is on your plate, or fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill... If you always find contentment just where you are... You are probably a dog." ~jack kornfield

We all have ideas of what it means to be spiritual. For me it is about the exquisite equanimity of this life. Creating balance so nothing throws me too far a field is a practice. And because I am human I need the practice. When I experience one of life's many challenges I have come to know I can change things myself and I do NOT need an EXTERNAL source to do the job. In this lies power. 

I love the life I am leading and when things get a little hairy or a bit off balance I love that I can easily turn things around by actively focusing my energy on all the abundance that surrounds me, all the love that is shared with me and all the love I am able to share with others. In a word - I am GRATEFUL! 

This is my G-spot. 

This provocative phrasing is deliberately chosen to get your attention. I want you to know this is serious business - the practice of moving actual energy within and around your own physical space. It is not just platitudinous gibber jabber. Nor, by the way, is it a heavy lift.

By regularly holding conscious thoughts that reveal joy, love and grace things do shift, energies do up level and experiences do become transformed.

And this is the place that feels real good to me, the place I cultivate within myself and the place from which I enjoy intimately sharing my life with others. 

Where is your energy focused? 

Tag You're It!

No Need for Struggle

"Don't keep pushing against closed doors. Look around for the open ones." ~ sanyana roman

Every now and then I get caught up in wanting a thing that may not be mine. I feel owed it. Or I need it. Or I just would like to have it because I briefly enjoyed it...so it must be mine.

For me, "being caught" is an indication I have stepped out of the flow of things and have begun a familiar dance of dragging myself against my better interest or anchoring myself when I could be happily moving along. Feelings of powerlessness show up as a life circumstance becomes harder than it has to be. And in the end - after some misbegotten actions or emotions - I get that it was never meant to be mine or perhaps there is a better way to do something.

I wonder why this happens? How come I retrace these steps now and then? 

It seems as if the wanted thing is the least of my concerns. I am coming to realize it is the unlearned lesson "to let go" that I am really after.

Do not get me wrong...struggle to achieve a goal is a good and mighty thing. It cultivates patience, trust, confidence, focus and concentration. But there are a myriad of ways to achieve and knowing that in the deeps of my soul is very liberating.

So I am learning to pay attention. And if it feels like I am being dragged down away from Joy... I stop. I reconsider my options all the while keeping my same goal in mind. It is having this kind of flexibility that eases my way forward. 

There really are endless ways to get there and still stay on your own path! And if you are lucky...and open... some of them may even surprise you!

Do you find flexibility to be one of your go to assets?

Tag You're it!

Lessons from the Farm

"…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream." ~from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Perhaps everybody knows these 3 things, but they were never explained to me so viscerally or so well as they were today!

Ask and you will receive. 

Walking past Flash, the dark brown and white speckled pony who is second in line in the pecking order between Tophat and Skippy, I was not focused on him there in the side pasture. I was focused on the six slips of hay I needed to get and dispense in the back pasture on this gray blue December day. So no mind was paid to Flash and his water barrel. After getting the hay in all the right places and on my coat and fat wool knitted scarf, Flash had not budged from his barrel to go eat. I took note and fed the goats. 

Suddenly there was no question what Flash wanted to see happen. Oh so that's the reason the blue barrel is lashed twice round the fence post. Wordlessly he was knocking the thing again and again so I Iet him know I hear you, "OK, OK...I get it...must put water in the empty water barrel NOW!" Requiring confirmation he did not leave his post to get his breakfast until he saw with his own pony's eyes the barrel and hose joined and the water flowing.  Ask and you will receive. The farm taught me this. 

Make every step count. 

Watching a 60 gallon barrel become full...just watching it is a gift. Resting there with intermittent rays of sunlight noiselessly raking the pasture, the peace of that moment was unmistakably given and received. 

Looking back at Flash's barrel, I worked out the time. Not clock time. Not the time to catch a bus or to meet a date. I needed to know the best approximate interval to begin walking, walking around the goat pen past the garage through the stone gate on to the muddy patch and beyond the guinea hen's squawk to get to the pump to turn the off the water that was currently filling the bucket. 

Figuring in real time this distance and pace to walk so I can shut off the hose at that exact perfect moment the bucket is filled is my kind of fun! I love this soft squishy numberless calculus involving just woman and foot and practical physics. When I got back to the barrel it appeared I had done it. We were all filled up, Flash and me, he with his water and me with my Joy! Make every step count. The farm taught me this.

Turn it off at the source. 

Flowing water is a must around here. A hose with many junctions provides flow all over the farm. The cutting off of the flow at the source would eliminate extra work and avoid unwanted complications. Turn the water off at the source, not at a junction otherwise you will just have to do it again and again until you get it right. Turn it off at the source. The farm taught me this.

So glad I got up this am. Seems nature and the animals are full of the Truth of Life. And so grateful I am awake and studying - never know when I will be tested again!

What teaches you stuff?

Tag You're it!

Advocating for Meditation

"Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible." ~tara branch

Everybody has their own unique natural state, their own baseline from which all their experiences begin. Some say we can move up the vibration of this - our unique natural state - to enhance our experience of life; to increase the amounts of JOY and LOVE we are able to know.

If you knew this to be the truth, why would you not set about immediately to begin doing it? 

"The realization of eternal truth comes at the expense of all of our illusions." ~adyashanti

Aha! Well I have had nothing to lose recently so my way of raising my vibration is through meditation. If I mindfully begin by setting my intention to make more abundant JOY and LOVE in my life and then practice quietly sitting still - in a way that makes sense for me - I have found I do generate just that. Not by direct effort, i.e. analytical planning out a strategy with steps and goals, but by simple use of my breath and my mind and my body in a standard practiced way. 

I use these same capacities, my breath, mind and body, in every other of life's routine situations. When I am brushing my teeth or washing my face or cooking a meal I use them to stay healthy, to shed cells, to grow and transform. So why not use my breath, mind and body (over time) to amp up my perception?

Like clothes that are worn in bright sunlight and washed and then hung on the line over and over again - Meditation has helped me to indirectly become slowly bleached of hardship and sorrow. My natural daily responses are fading away from material concerns and focusing more toward a wholistic embodiment of loving energy. I do not know where this will lead but this is the direction in which I am going! 

Oh I still go grocery shopping, make plans, art and money. But gradually I am coming to see with these newer more joyful and loving eyes. And I see that all is well. Really...I swear! And all this "all is well" jazz started by just sitting quietly and not trying at all. This is a feat in itself - I know.

And so unlike the way we have been taught to strive for JOY and LOVE. So alien and perverse and cliche! But it works for me. This is my chosen path. And I am still living the same life I have always lived - just better by every measure.

What does your path look like?

Tag You're It!

Getting Back to My Life

"A low point in life is sometimes a turning point. but you have to turn"  ~ thomas moore, author of Care of the Soul 

In a difficult moment I found myself saying aloud, "I can't wait to get back to my life!" And seconds later I recognized that this moment, every part and parcel of it, was my life. So I took a deep breath and thought to myself - just go with the flow.

Now I find myself thinking I am relinquishing too much control and must put order back into my life. I must invest in my own intentions. I am masterful and must take hold of the reins and choose a path!

Then I say aloud, "How do I do this exactly?"

Taking charge suggests taking action to me. Is this always the case you think?

Tag You're It!

An Open Invitation

Crazy good explanation...I am so grateful for it's joyful clarity! http://omeleto.com/199433/

Love Beyond Measure

"For I have learned that every

heart will get

What it prays for

Most " - hafiz

How much Love can you take? 

Let's talk volume here. Is it enough? Is it too much? Can you take just a little more? And just a little more again? Why is there a set amount that is allowed? Does it burn to feel the unbounded vastness of Love's light? Is it possible to conceive of this much Love being at your disposal?

Is a little trickle thru a tiny fissure in the granite of a great stone gorge all you can abide at this time? Any fissure can become a crack. And any crack can break wide open...if you let it.

What about a gusher? What about a geyser? What about an tidal wave? Now we are talking about more than just volume. We are adding velocity. It is too much, too fast! Make it stop - all this Love! It hurts too much!

Let's just stop this all together! Let's just stop this "stopping Love." Let's just let it flow and feel it however it arrives, accept it no matter what it looks like, who brings it, or how fast (or slowly) it comes. 

Make welcome Love. Make welcome Love. Make welcome Love.

This is my prayer.

What does your heart pray for?

Tag You're It!

Turning the Corner

"...while the voice of social conditioning manifests itself as a stream of thoughts in the head, wisdom often appears as emotions or physical sensations in the body." ~martha beck

Unfoldment

Rough hune husks fall away

Making tender tendrils shown

Creeping vines and shoots gather

In a storm of awakening

I am anew

I am crossing over

I am peachy keen apple sheen and picked clean of waste and affirmative prayers

I will not shine without my own permission

I await the next unfoldment

For what do you need your own permission?

Tag You're It!

Viva Les Questions!

"It can't just be about others because it's too depleting. It can't just be about ourselves because it's too lonely." ~Jason Garner

Everywhere everyday opportunities arise to help ourselves and to help others but where is the balance? How can we next make the right decision to help ourselves or to help others? What kind of mastermind can hone in on the right thing today to do right now?

These are an awful lot of questions. But I have found when I ask questions it is not my responsibility to answer them. It is only my responsibility to form them from a deep and meaningful place within my heart. And I know if I do this, from this place, the answers will come to me easily.

Takes a load off doesn't it? 

It is so great to know you don't have to have the answers. You only have to ask the RIGHT question! 

These questions are both the key to our suffering and the key to our joy. I am certain you are totally aware we all have easy access to our own questions. They just naturally exist in us all. They are as individual to each of us ad our own particular journeys. And they all contain the answers we are seeking within them!

Just ask them. 

Just ask them WITH FEELING from a sincere place deep inside your heart knowing in the asking the answer lies. 

I have found great peace in allowing myself to just live in my questions like this  - for I know the answers will come. 

Got any questions?

Tag You're It!

The Divine in Scotland

the divine in the palm of our hands

"I am where I need to be.

Everything around me

includes and hides the sacred."

                     ~ Mary Mrozowski

This includes haggis.

What is divine that is in front of you?

Tag You're It!

Fallen

Fallen

I am wounded 

I am weak 

I am not alone.

Scooped up

Made warm and welcome

Earth dug deep with candles lit

Your love nourishes me.

Gracious nestling

In your family's home, 

your heart, your lives, your land.

Just now this way 

I am safe 

I can crow 

I am made stronger 

in your light.

Fly away fly away 

I am going to fly away

Destined to glide high

To soar and to make my own nest.

On the bits of love 

you placed in me.

You give my wings their wind.

~ Dedicated to all the Chapmans who keep me, nourish me and give me wings.

Who does this for you?

Tag Your It!

Good Purposeless-ness...from Other Voices

"like the lovely, free-form edge of a bird's wings, we cultivate our essence, an alchemy of soul.....this, simply by being present and alive.....yes, fully alive...…" 

~ in the blue

Our Strength Found in Fragile Depths 

"I am especially struck with the idea

of the purposeless life,

filling the well with snow.

I suppose all life is just that anyway,

but we are obsessed with purpose" 

~Thomas Merton

____________________

"The longing to live free from care, or to live what Merton in his letter to Suzuki calls the purposeless life, should not be mistaken for a simple disregard for others or for the world, or a willingness to live without care for persons or things. Rather, it expresses a hunger to discover a more honest, free, and open way of living in the world that enables one to see and respond to the other without succumbing to the temptation to think of such relationships only in terms of their utility and purpose. 

Indeed, one of the fundamental questions raised by the contemplative tradition has to do with how best to understand purpose and utility in human life, and whether the meaning of things depends on their having a purpose or a use. Also, whether an insistence on the fundamental value of utility and purposefulness undermines our very capacity to see and notice and respond to the world in its own terms. 

At its roots, these are also questions about what kind of value we attribute to things like play, imagination, attention, and prayer; and whether they can be understood, at least in conventional or economic terms, as having any purpose at all. Especially important in this regard is the cultivation of the kind of capacious awareness that can help us learn to feel and take in the beauty and power of the world for its own sake and refrain from evaluating it purely in terms of its utility. 

And while the cultivation and practice of such awareness may not be sufficient in itself to help us redress the pernicious effects of our utilitarian and acquisitive culture, the recovery of such capacity will almost certainly be necessary to the kind of sustained imaginative, ecological, and spiritual renewal of the world" 

~ Douglas Christie

_______________________

"liquid life in motion

So from the ground we felt that virtue branch

Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists

As fresh and pure as water from a well,

Our hands made new to handle holy things,

The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed

Till earth and light and water entering there

Gave back to us the clear unfallen world."

~ Edwin Muir

In Blue | October 15, 2014 at 6:03 am | Tags: aliveness, awakening heart, awe, beauty defined, deep kindness, deep longing, deep play, fragile beauty, free spirit, fresh perspective, inner divinity, nurturing beauty, sacred awareness, seeking the sacred, spirit in flight | Categories: Beauty | URL: http://wp.me/p1Wc4z-2J5

Hurdles - Present and Past

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough 
of what it's thirsty for!
~ Rumi

This was my father. 

He passed away 5 days ago. He was 75 and I loved him very much and I know he loved me.

And even though I have 2 years experience in the grief department and because I have this much experience in the grief department I am aware this means almost nothing. 

Grieving is a slippery character that creeps up unexpectedly and in a surprisingly different number of ways! So part of me is OK, part of me is on guard and cautious, part of me is angry at the timing and part of me hurts. And in this order... I think.

Unlike with my husband Michael's death, with whom I had a much more intimate relationship, my father's passing feels OK-er. We lived hundreds of miles apart for the majority of my life and I have not depended on him for anything since I was a teen. There was this distance both geographically and emotionally so I admit I might not be having strong feelings at the moment. But I suspect there will be 'karmic' repercussions that must be felt.

And unlike Michael, my father's death is more in keeping with natural expectations. He lead a life full of invention and inspiration and that life in him had begun to wane. For this reason I feel his soul may actually be in a good - or perhaps even a better place - with more flexibility and possibilities for growth. I am assuming our souls are continually learning.

Just working on the timing of this thing in regards to my own healing. I had just gotten back in the saddle, was on the horse and was learning how to trot. And while trotting I could SEE myself cantering and I was joyously anticipating some galloping soon!

Then this - a new hurdle - so I must readjust.

Now I am working on accepting what is and allowing it to unfold as it must. Its gonna do it anyway. I just have to get comfortable, hang on to the reins and go for it. 

Go up and over
     and thus continue forward 
          no matter what
     on this
my new path.

I just love a good metaphor - don't you?

Tag Your It!

Pumpkin Bread

He loved Pumpkin Bread. He loved a lot of specific things. He knew what he liked because after much living and much thinking about living he made a point to extract the wheat from the chaff. He knew by practical experimentation which things worked best and he held tight to those things. 

So I always knew what to expect. I always knew where things stood for him and with us. And even though, at the time, it was occasionally frustrating - his certainty, his precision, his discipline - there was an awful lot of comfort in his smart, steady and well reasoned ways.

Now, since his death, my husband's quirky and concrete preferences are landmarks in time. So often, when I come across "the right hanger" or I again "hang the towels his way" in the bathroom so they dry fast and well, I smile. But sometimes these things, like this speciality bread at the beginning of Fall, break-my-heart-all-over-again. 

No sense in avoiding it, so I just let it come. Once Iit, it races up from my heart straight out my eyes like how brush fires hop fences in a robust wind. I think about how I have no napkins to wipe my tears here in the cafe. And how I should have some sunglasses to hide my swollen eyes. 

Thoughts act as a break dousing the thing. The more I think the more things improve.

I have lots to do today and lots to look forward to. Lots of new beginnings and exciting changes going on! And just as I know every moment is sacred, I also know this moment will pass. Some new thing will happen and this event too will become the past.

Fire now out, smoke and char remain. But I keep it together. And I move on…

Have you tasted the Pumpkin Bread at La Farm French Bakery? Oh you must, it is sooooo delicious! 

Why can't we live fully with joy - no matter what?

Tag You're It!

Words as Tools

I think words are tools by which we fashion a life. What other purpose could there be?

Harmony 

by Madeline Williams

"I believe in Divine Harmony and nothing else. This means I have no belief in problems. No condition, situation or frustration can upset me, confuse me or destroy my equilibrium.

I do not believe there is any power in evil, therefore it cannot have any recognition from me. Absence of prosperity, love, self-expression or health is not evil for there is no evil. When any of these great necessities to my happiness appear to be absent from my life the cause is the absence of their equivalent in my mind. I now declare that these verities eternally abide in my consciousness.

Just as the truth about a problem in mathematics is its solution, the truth about any problem which confronts me is its solution now--not next week or next year, but now.

The truth about anything is all there is of that thing, and that is always good. 

Divine Harmony is now at work in my life and affairs because I believe in Divine Harmony and nothing else."

What words are in your tool box?

Tag You're It!